Today is the shortest day of the year with the sun rising at 7:13 AM and setting at 4:17 PM. And if that’s not exciting enough for you, there’s some funky stuff going on with Saturn, which is the reason one astrologer thinks that anything you try to do today will be more difficult, take more time and be more frustrating …..you can check Google for all the celestial details..
If you add together Winter Solstice, 4 days before Christmas and everyone and their brother out and about today trying to get some last minute shopping done, common sense would tell us today could be more difficult, very frustrating and take more time…as a matter of fact I had to wait 30 minutes today to get a mani pedi…so that was both frustrating and difficult for me today.
While the shortest day of the year seems depressing, our ancestors celebrated this day in so many ways knowing that in the days to come the days would be longer. Did you know that Yule logs are a leftover from the Pagan celebration of Yule? People would celebrate with song and dance and burn a real log as an offering to the Solstice. Who knew the large chocolate log shape cakes we buy at Costco originated from a real log offering to the Solstice? The internet is a wonderful thing…
So how do we in the 21st century celebrate the Winter Solstice? I don’t think we do….perhaps one of our Facebook friends posted something today, perhaps we heard it on the radio or TV, but consciously celebrating this day I don’t think is on anyone’s radar. What with the shopping, wrapping, cooking, cleaning and moving the Elf around, we barely have time to breathe, let alone celebrate the shortest day of the year.
So tonight I’d like to find a reason to celebrate, just because it is the shortest day. We’ll screw on the Christmas lights in the windows, light the Christmas tree, switch on the twinkling lights on the garland over the fireplace, light up the little village and flip the switch on the floodlight outside the front door, then relax in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine. And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll crack open the Spring 2018 seed catalog we received in the mail today to pay homage to the longer days to come. And then top off the evening with an episode of The Crown to honor the Stonehenge Winter Solstice gatherings. That will be our Winter Solstice 2017 celebration…hopefully Saturn won’t mess things up..
Happy Winter Solstice everyone!
Bradymom 